Northrop Grumman

From SpaceWiki

Los Angeles-based Northrop Grumman is one of the world's best-known military contractors. As you might have guessed, it was formed when a company named Northrop bought another one named Grumman in 1994. What most people don't know is that the company is the current owner of Scaled Composites, the company that built SpaceShipOne, and is also one of the major sponsors of the annual student-run SpaceVision conference.

The company is organized into sectors, and the Aerospace Systems Sector is not purely military-focused. It builds satellites for the Air Force, but also for NASA and NOAA. One of their military projects, in collaboration with Boeing, was a futuristic airplane-mounted laser system designed to shoot down short-range ballistic missiles, which has since been shelved.